December 14, 2007 (the date of publication in Russian)

Konstantin Cheremnykh

"MEDVEDOLOGY" OUT OF THIN AIR

Kremlinologists have degenerated into a species of twaddlers and schlockmeisters

DEEP PURPLE, OR BLACK SABBATH?

As recently as in late November, Rightist Alliance Party’s bosses, pulling up a modest costume to go out at an illegal demo, would hint with an important wink that the situation in Russia has "qualitatively changed". With Vladimir Putin's sudden decision to lend his name to the list of United Russia Party, winds of the change seemed really to start blowing. The Rightist Alliance, obviously looking back at the Western democracy-lovers, believed to know the direction. Western experts, in their turn, made conclusions on the looming change with reference mostly to a Russian publication Kommersant Daily, which exploded with two sensations during a week – the open letter of General Victor Cherkesov, head of Anti-Drug Authority, and the scandalous interview with a certain Oleg Schwartzman, taken by the paper's author at Palo Alto conference on globalization.

The two revelations seemed to mark the onset of a turf war between force ministries, seeming to develop into a fight of the notorious bulldogs already not under but upon the Kremlin carpet. For Rightist activists, this smelled with a reiteration of year 1990, when power is lying in the street while the winter cold is eventually changed with a thaw.

However, the expectations of a "Belgrade spring in Moscow are going to be postponed at least till year 2012. The Russian power has not fallen apart; on the contrary, Russia consolidated and its independent posture in foreign policy, unilaterally suspending fulfillment of CFE Treaty, resuming cooperation with Tehran on in nuclear energy, achieving mutual understanding with the new Polish government, signing a new comprehensive agreement with Belarus, and demanding the British Council to curtail its so-called public activity in Russia – all this during a week. Meanwhile, the Western business and financial community displayed no signs of anxiety: as Russia made clear that its power transition is going to be smooth and unlabored, the stock of Russian corporations only gained weight.

A real split took place in the Western expert community. It split not only on the assessment of the transition but also on the general view on the West's treatment of Russia.

Though Dmitry Medvedev's candidature for Presidency had been on the table for almost two years, its approval aroused a debate on assessment of the forecast of his policy line, as well as on the grade of his dependence from the current leadership of Russia.

Some authors refer to Mr. Medvedev's statement about essential need of freedom for entrepreneurship, also indicating Mr. Medvedev's sympathy to rock music (here experts divide, identifying either Deep Purple or Black Sabbath as his favorite rock band), which is seen as evidence of the candidate's liberal views. Others point at the same Medvedev's verbal assumption that parliamentary democracy is a system unacceptable for Russia, thus concluding that the "dictatorial" policy is going to persist.

Washington Post, exemplifying the latter pessimistic viewpoint, gloomily concludes that Russia has returned to the times when everything in the country depended on whims of a single person in power. This conclusion, given that Washington Post's editorials are regularly translated on Russian websites, is supposed to impose pessimism on Russia's intelligentsia, as well as the business class. However, the two target audiences react to these warnings like Leo Tolstoy would react to the apocalyptic writings of his contemporary Leonid Andreyev: "he threatens, but I'm not scared".

At the same time, the stereotypic mourning of Russia's crumbled democracy, along with glorification of caricature liberals like Garry Kasparov, typical for Washington Post and Wall Street Journal (where Mr. Kasparov serves as a staff observer), arouses irony and unprecedented ruthless criticism from sober-minded authors like Nicolai N. Petro (IHT) and Bronwen Maddox (The Times), who correctly indicate that Russia has lately learnt to use the attacks from figures like Kasparov and ex-oligarch Boris Berezovsky for its own benefit, as the negative popularity of these person only convinces a common Russian of soundness and adequacy of Putin's political line.

 

THE INVERSE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCY

I remember perfectly well the times of the "iron curtain" when everything depended on whims of a single person. At that times, strolling along a major street of Leningrad, you could not help bumping against a huge portrait of the General Secretary, the greatest hero of war, labor, and diplomacy (an anecdote of that time told that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev has undergone a surgical operation to expand his chest for reserving more space for new Soviet and Comecon awards).

On the eve of the parliamentary elections of December 2, the United Russia Party, with Vladimir Putin as No.1 in its federal list, definitely portrayed itself as party No.1. Still, representative of its rivals were seen at every metro station, and I did not have an impression that someone is imposing on me a single and "solely true" choice. On the day of the elections, the house manager did not knock at my door, and enthusiastic songs did not pour out of street radio.

What I also remember perfectly well that in the times of the "iron curtain", Western experts were pretty informed about the so-called fight of Politburo bulldogs under the carpet, though there was no Kommersant Daily paper to speculate on its proceedings and outcome. Listening to Radio Liberty in autumn 1982, I would find out that beside Comrade Andropov, at least two other Politburo members – namely, Comrades Shcherbitsky and Kirilenko, sought the role of Leonid Brezhnev's successor. One more anecdote about the oldest Politburo member Arvid Pelshe displayed Radio Liberty as the most informed and operative agency able to find out that the old man messed his pants at a Plenum before all the other Comrades could detect his disgrace.

Today's quality of political analysis appears to be astoundingly inversely proportional to the degree of openness, achieved since the fall of the "iron curtain". Reading a new concoction of a Moscow-based special correspondent of a New York paper, I have grounds to doubt that the guy really witnessed the events he described. I could rather suspect that instead, the guy was sitting in a fancy restaurant or private club on Tverskaya Street (Moscow's main street), in order to later call a couple of local gossip collectors and sell a tincture of three-year-old rumors as up-to-date analysis.

In case a special correspondent describes the announcement of Putin's successor as a Brezhnev-time solemn and unanimous "all-people's approval", that means that the guy is enough illiterate in Russian to have missed the story on RIA Novosti, the major state-dominated news agency, reproducing Mr. Putin's own remark on Mr. Medvedev's best appointment back in 2000 (as head of the Federal Securities Commission), as well as the ironical coverage in Moskovsky Komsomolets, the most popular paper in Moscow, whose cartoonist displayed a bear cub led by hand to the formidable den with a wall and star-topped towers by an elder bear. In 1982, not only a major Moscow tabloid but a district paper in Eastern Siberia would be closed on the same day for a cartoon like that.

In order to foresee a political change and its implications, an author, representing a renowned mass medium in a particular country, especially in a country influencing the global political balance, is supposed to be able not just perceive the contours of existing and potentially emerging political teams but also to sensate the degree of social temperature, not speaking of the economic background of what is referred to as rivalry of clans. However, comprehensive analysis is substituted in current political reports with superficial judgments, characterizing mainly the author's own personal obsessions and fears or the mental stereotypes of bosses to which the author conveniently caters.

 

HEDGEHOGS IN THE MIST

I have to admit that some of the special correspondents decently tried to receive information from valuable sources at the spot, reaching the level of knowledge of Russian enabling to grasp the slang of Russian Livejournal, particularly of someone's page entitled "tumanny-ejik" (literally, "a hedgehog in the mist", a reference to the name of a popular Soviet-time animation). Still, the closer their were to the center of gossip production, the more they were mislead in this mist – unlike a number of columnists who did not leave Washington or London and judged upon the probable change from general considerations.

This failure of the most "integrated" authors is now being substantiated with Vladimir Putin's secretive manner of decision-making, expressed as "pulling a rabbit from his sleeve which later appears to be an opossum", "sophisticated manipulation of balance", or "wrongfooting" observers (using this term from tennis sport, The Guardian's special correspondent Luke Harding overlooks the fact that unlike his predecessor, Vladimir Putin prefers to go in for ski slalom, which really meets some point).

However, Mr. Putin did not "wrongfoot", for instance, The Times' columnist Bronwen Maddox, a lady with a masculine harsh and well-founded logic, free from superficial illusions as well as neurotic obsessions. In her column dated December 4, she correctly described the change though not mentioning the name of Putin's successor.

Any Moscow journalist would ridicule the reference to the very system of a "manipulated democracy" which allegedly prevents an observer from making a sound forecast. "Putin selects a successor, not restricting himself with democracy", explain Washington Post's editors, thus justifying their own inability to guess either the name of the successor or the date of his endorsement or the candidature of Prime Minister. They editors seem to overlook their own intrinsic contradiction. After all, if the "manipulated-democracy" system is so profoundly corrupt as they portray it, why couldn't a special correspondent find a routine way to the petty soul of some party functionary to get exclusive information about the event dated December 10, when not only United Russia alone, the reputed "party of officials", but FOUR parties addressed the president endorsing Dmitry A. Medvedev for his succession?

Washington Post's editors were able on December 11, in a report entitled "The Next President of Russia", to tell its audience that Dmitry A. Medvedev never served in KGB – the fact obvious from any official biography. From this fact, however, the so-called experts bluntly derive the suggestion that Mr. Medvedev may have a different world outlook than Vladimir Putin, and is able to implement these different views with reliance upon broad capabilities, provided by the Constitution.

I beg your pardon: as far as I remember (Nikolay N. Petro remembers that as well, which qualifies him as a person with historical thinking, which is an indispensable quality for an expert), the currently operating Constitution was approved in December 1993. That means that Boris N. Yeltsin disposed an equal range of capabilities with his successor. Still, Mr. Yeltsin was dependent on "seven-banker" dictate; on the IMF; on his security aide Alexander Korzhakov; on his liberal advisors who facilitated ascent of Dzhokhar Dudayev to power in Chechnya; on his own daughter and her relations with then-Head of Staff Anatoly Chubais; on mass media which not only glorified but also blackmailed him in particular interests of privileges; and finally, on the particular opinion of the US Ambassador in Moscow. Vlaimir Putin effectively managed to get rid of all those restrictions (interpreted by Washington Post's authors as "restrictions of democracy"), though the Constitution was almost unchanged under his rule, with the exception of the mechanism of election of Governors which is still more democratic than their direct appointment, equally practiced in Kazakhstan and the "nascent democracy" of Ukraine.

Comparing a pair of US Presidents, one could also discern difference determined not only by written law but on personal characteristics. This indispensable detail is missing in all the numerous pieces of coverage of today's Russian transition, thus making the net result of expert work practically unusable.

On December 11, the authoritative Washington Post was even unable to predict Medvedev's proposal to Vladimir Putin to take the post of Prime Minister. That means that the whole Washington Post staff is less professional than a single columnist from The Times – I mean Mrs. Maddox.

As soon as Mr. Medvedev delivers his proposal, the general intonation of coverage in US media distinctly and funnily modifies. The very person who was a subject of flirt a day before is becoming a subject of blackmail. IHT's Andrew Cramer meaningfully prompts that the Prime Minister (i.e. Putin – K.C.), in accordance with the Constitution (which had just opened unlimited prospects for the successor (K.C.), may become President in case the acting President (i.e. Medvedev – K.C.) resigns, is impeached, is incapacitated or dies. A nice valedictory to Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev from the sympathizing Western media community!

The prospect of incapacitation for Mr. Medvedev seems to be the least probable, regarding his young age. The same young age is seen by the sagacious observers as a drawback: Mr. Medvedev, they say, does not have enough support in the present system of power. I beg your pardon: does not Mr. Medvedev chair the board of Gazprom? Isn't this company the most powerful of Russian corporation? Isn't it state-dominated? Isn't it financially powerful enough to supply itself with most efficient security?

The very fact that Gazprom's head of board is selected as Putin's successor smashes the next generally accepted argument – namely, that Mr. Putin intended to select a weak figure, in order to run the country himself and use the President only for presentation needs. If that was true, he would have selected the former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who had proven his humbleness and lack of personal ambitions during three years of service.

Other experts, on the contrary, associated the elevation of Gazprom's head of board with the prospects of the notorious economic pressure of the Russian state upon European consumer of Russian gas and especially transit countries. It would be much more fruitful to elaborate on the long-time competition of fuel-trading and military industrial lobbies in the Russian establishment, in a comprehensive overview of foreign policy implications. This really inspiring analytical endeavor is hardly available for permanent visitors of Tverskaya restaurants, lazily relying upon expertise of local sources of the type of Belkovsky and Piontkovsky.

 

NEVER SAY "UKRAINE"!

Quite expectably, implicit predictions of a sudden death or fatal injury for the successors were followed with outspoken forecasts of an imminent lethal threat for Vladimir Putin. The team of renowned CSIS experts, composed of reputedly experienced figures with a good nose on Russia, exposed itself, most miserably, not even with the fancy futurological style of their "negative version of prognosis" but with the same failure to foresee the ascent of Dmitry Medvedev to the role of successor. Instead, they recognized Putin's preferable select in First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey E. Naryshkin. For this fiasco of prognosis, this author alone could propose three explanations: firstly, the analysts were convinced that the successor would be necessarily picked from foreign intelligence; secondly, that the factor of origin from Russian nobility is a preferable argument in Putin's imperialist mindset (no wonder that the fancy prognosis is ascribed personally to Andy Kuchins, who had already displayed his skill of drawing historical parallels like: Prince Vladimir the Baptizer – Vlad Dracula – Vladimir Putin); and thirdly, that such a highly reputable figure like Center for Defense Information’s Dr. Nikolai Zlobin had repeatedly pushed the "Naryshkin option" on high levels of opinion- and decision-making.

The list of supposed conspiracy-makers, concocted by the expert team, includes FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, Presidential assistant Victor Ivanov, and Deputy Head of Staff Igor Sechin. This selection perfectly coincides with the five-year-old analysis of Effective Policy Foundation's Gleb Pavlovsky, which had built his artificial division of the Russian elite into two "tribes" – of liberal and military-intelligence creatures – for the immediate needs of his own institution. The visibly biased mechanical construction, featured for Mr. Pavlovsky has captured the minds of top Moscow-based analysts so efficiently that they failed to notice some crucial changes in the so-called "law enforcement community" during the last five years, though these shifts were excessively covered in the same Kommersant Daily.

The futurological fudge presented by Thomas Graham, Andrew Kuchins, Anders Aslund et al. would not be discussed so heatedly in Russian media if it did not accidentally coincide with the prophecy of a terrorist assault on would-be Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, authored by renowned Moscow analyst Sergey Markov, who had spent several years in Mr. Kuchins- headed Moscow office of Carnegie Foundation.

Though randomly coinciding and highly speculative, Mr. Markov's forecast was useful, forcing international experts to focus on the parallel which lies on the table but miraculously stays unnoticed: the parallel between the style, quality, and reliability of power transition in a "manipulated democracy" of Russia and "true democracy" of Ukraine, where the long-selected and well known joint democratic select Yulia Tymoshenko failed to get approved for the post of Premier due to lack of a single vote, this mischief followed with a physical brawl in the Supreme Rada, dozens of MPs, according to RIA Novosti's reporter, "started jostling and pouring water upon one another".

In the coverage of Medvedev's ascent in Anglo-American media, not a single word was uttered about Medvedev's experience of dealing with Ukraine – though the words "Gazprom" and "Ukraine" had combined a million times in the web; though in his earlier capacity of Head of President's Staff, Mr. Medvedev had led a comprehensive dialogue with Leonid Kuchma's administration and particularly with his counterpart Victor Medvedchuk (the combination of the two names being a permanent subject of irony in Kiev). Yet in late 2004, Postimees, a bilingual paper issued in Tallinn, Estonia, indicated the "orange revolution" in Ukraine is going to weaken Dmitry A. Medvedev's prospects of a Presidential successor. In summer of the current year, two Ukrainian gossip websites described a breathtaking conspiracy in Kiev with strings leading, again, via the disgraced Mr. Medvedchuk to a powerful Mr. Medvedev. However, even these rumors, so precious for a professional political speculator, would not surface in the writings of professional political speculators.

This fact has only two possible interpretations: either the modern level of political analysis in Washington and London has sunk to a far inferior level than that of the political analysts from Tallinn and Kiev, or the picture of the Supreme Rada, with a disabled electronic counting system and chair legs plugged into door locks, is so profoundly unpleasant for the self-wrongfooted disseminators of "true democracy" that Ukraine, as a geographical and political phenomenon, is supposed, if not instructed, to be blacked out of media coverage.

The bloodthirsty scenario of Andrew Kuchins et al. reflects actually the same: the blatantly superficial and essentially untidy description of a supposed brawl in Kremlin, followed with an improbable – but desirable? – popular unrest, seems to serve as an attempt to envisage at least a single chain of activities, capable to shake the system of "manipulated democracy", which is too obviously stabile. The contrast of Ukraine (drawing the high-experienced Richard Holbrooke, with his recent advice to Moscow to follow the Kiev path, as a perfect idiot) is evidently so disastrous that the "democratic censure" orders to completely black out the undesirable parallel.

The reaction of the international business community to the Russian transition demonstrates that the censorship of the Moscow-Kiev parallel is perfectly helpless. Sundry speculations over supposed lethal incidents are even less efficient, as they too transparently reveal the real obsessions of Washington and London, and serve – as sober and intellectually independent authors correctly indicated it – only for consolidation of the Russian establishment and the Russian nation generally.

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